Speaking of friends, one friend pulled me aside recently to ask whether I was offline more often because he’d done something to offend me. That’s not it — I just want to spend more time with my husband than with the computer. I’m sure I’ll have upticks in online time again sometime in the future, but I’m not sure I’ve hit my low point in this downtick yet, so don’t take it personally if I’m not on the forum or on IM after work. It’s just, well, I love him enough to have married him, so he gets first dibs on my time.

And speaking of Nighthawk, another friend pulled me aside recently to ask whether the current cancer comics indicate that Nighthawk’s health is in flux again. That’s an emphatic no. He’s doing very well — the cancer’s undetectable which means there’s a good chance it’s gone altogether, and everything else is good.

So why the cancer comics? Because a) even though he’s doing very well, I find I work through major emotional stuff best by writing, and what better topic than the item that kicked all this off? and b) there isn’t a whole lot out there on thyroid cancer. It’s a pretty rare cancer, and if we can pass on anything we learned to someone else who experiences it, that’s a good thing, to me.

But (and this should be obvious) this isn’t an autobiographical journal comic any more than Real Life is a purely autobiographical journal comic. “Inspired by occasional true events” is accurate. “Details what actually happened to me” is not. 90% of the stuff in the comic is crap I made up.

Milo’s a good example — none of the alien life forms I work with are that short.

It’s past my bedtime, and I’m not going to get the comic I was working on finished tonight. Tomorrow maybe.

Tomorrow’s date night with more Firefly. Yay!

I also created a new teeshirt design. Check it out by clicking that big store talk bubble up there in the top right corner. If you can’t tell which one’s the new one, you haven’t visited the store enough. ;)